u n r e m e m b e r i n g - 2018 - video/audio installation
this was not the video I had intended to make - but lost in contemplation, running through my original intention one bright blustery sunday morning, my thought processes were interrupted by an overheard conversation - bamboo, sunlight and a stiff south easterly were vociferously conversing on the wall in my hall - I filmed it - I then filmed directly back out through the window into the dazzling sunlight piercing and bursting through the bamboo overloading the sensors in my camera - the results are what you see
what you hear developed as an idea from the sound recording I made in which there almost appeared some sense of content to the insistent whisperings between the breeze and the bamboo - somehow, my not 'speaking the language' seemed an advantage - it made me concentrate on the poetics of the sound - the rises and falls, nuances and inflections - I asked myself a question, "is it still poetry when you don't understand the words?"
the explosive imagery felt like neurons firing in response to some redolent event - rememberings bursting to the fore - but it was the quietening as they fell back into the distance that held me - there appeared an acquiescence to these unrememberings, then an unremembering of the unrememberings and then, as if anew, a re-remembering.
1 in 6 people over the age of 80 in the uk live with dementia in one form or another - living in a world of remembering/unremembering , input from the outside often seems like listening to a different language - however, there comes a stage of bitter sweet amnesia when not remembering not remembering enables some re-enjoyment of the poetry of life - even with no understanding of the words